RecodeCopied

Re/code launched a redesigned website on 9 May 2016 with a new logo and, as Poynter put it, plenty of white space. Style junkies could rejoice: the pesky slash was gone, and Re/code was now Recode.

The change came almost a year after Vox Media acquired the site and its events business. Poynter described a publication gradually evolving from a Bay Area tech outlet into a global chronicle of all things tech. Its new editor-in-chief, who had arrived from Quartz two months earlier, told Poynter that tech was now business, and laid out plans for international coverage, short posts in a new BTW section, longer contextual pieces, more charts and an aggressive move into video.

In his welcome post, the editor addressed the elephant in the room first: yes, they were losing the slash. The simplification ran through the whole redesign, which moved to Vox Media's Chorus publishing system. He called the new logo sharp and said its designer was the same person behind the Oculus branding; the team had also stripped out unnecessary website features and decluttered the layout. That did not mean Recode would get boring, he promised, listing scoops, analysis, podcasts and video.

The context explains the move. Under the slash, Re/code had read as a clever, slightly insider name for an industry trade sheet. Without it, Recode becomes a plain word that can travel to new sections like transportation and to readers outside Silicon Valley.

The launch note on Vox promised that simplification would not mean boring: more scoops, analysis, podcasts and a push into video, with a new transportation section and growing interest in robotics, food tech, artificial intelligence, the business of space and the future of work. It recalled reporting from Toshiba's indoor lettuce farm outside Tokyo, built in a former floppy-disk clean room. A broader beat needs a calmer name, and dropping the slash was the typographic equivalent of widening the remit.

That is exactly the right call, and the restraint of the new mark suits it. The slash was a pun that asked readers to do work every time they typed or said the name. Losing it costs a little wit and gains a lot of usability. The logo matters less than the decision to stop being clever with punctuation, and that decision was overdue.